Network switches have been used to forward packets from one node to another node. Such network switch devices may include a first network port for receiving packets from a first node, and a second network port for passing the packets to a second node.
In some cases, packet switch devices (appliances) may be used to forward a copy of packets (either obtained through a SPAN port of a switch or router, or by making a copy of each packet through its built-in tap modules) in the packet-switching network, to network monitoring or security tools for analysis thereby. Such packet switch appliances may have one or more network ports for connection to the packet-switching network and one or more instrument ports connected to one or more network instruments for monitoring packet traffic, such as packet sniffers, intrusion detection systems, application monitors, or forensic recorders.
A packet switch device may be configured to pass packets that are received at a network port to an egress port based on a destination IP address. However, the model/technique for configuring such packet switch device may not be employed to implement port-pairing between two or more network ports. Also, the model/technique for configuring such packet switch device may not be employed to implement pass-all configuration (e.g., passing all packets from a port to an egress port regardless of the packet content (such as any of the header information), and/or regardless of whether there is another filtering logic that copies this packet to other egress port(s)). In some cases, a different model/technique may be employed to configure the packet switch device to perform port-pairing and provide pass-all feature. However, Applicant of the subject application determines that using different models/techniques to configure the packet switch device to deal with different network monitoring requirements (situations) may be costly and time consuming to implement, and may make the operation of the device cumbersome, inefficient, and non-flexible. Thus, Applicant of the subject application has determined that it would be desirable to provide new packet switch devices and methods for processing packets.